Good Morning!!

This post is late because I had a computer emergency this morning. Fortunately I got it resolved after a struggle, but I was on the verge of panic for a bit. I hate computer problems.

The first big winter storm of 2014 has begun. Here in Greater Boston, we have a couple of inches on the ground. We were supposed to get heavy snow last night, and now they’re saying it will come tonight instead. We’re supposed to get light snow through out the day and we have blizzard warnings in effect for tonight with about a foot of snow expected by tomorrow. We’ll see . . . the weather people haven’t been that accurate so far this winter. But it’s a huge storm that will affect people across the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic states and New England.

The double-barreled storm system stretching from the lower Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic coast could dump more than 12 inches of snow in some areas, especially southern New England, by Friday morning, the National Weather Service said.

“Heavy snow, strong winds, frigid temperatures and dangerous wind chills are in forecast for much of the region,” it said in a statement.

The storm is expected to snarl traffic on the I-95 highway corridor between New York and Boston, the weather service said. At the southern edge of the storm, Washington is expected to receive less than one inch of snow.

The powerful storm forced about 1,000 U.S. flights to be canceled and about 250 delayed, with the worst-affected airport Chicago’s O’Hare International, according to FlightAware, a website which tracks air travel.

In the Arctic, the passengers on that stranded ship have finally been rescued. NBC News:

All 52 passengers who were stranded aboard an ice-locked ship in Antarctica for more than a week were rescued by helicopter early Thursday, officials said.

The Akademic Shokalskiy sent out a distress call on Christmas morning after it became surrounded by sea ice while on a scientific mission more than 1,700 miles south of Australia.

On Thursday, a helicopter from a Chinese ice-breaking ship Xue Long — or Snow Dragon — transported groups from a makeshift helipad which the passengers had stomped out in the ice near the ship.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) tweeted at 6.20 a.m. ET Thursday that all of the 52 passengers had been airlifted from the Akademik Shokalskiy and were now on board the Aurora Australis ice-breaker.

Photos and video at the link.

Yesterday an explosion started a fire in a Minneapolis building where many Somalis lived. The building was next door to a mosque. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be arson. From The Columbus Dispatch: 14 hurt in blast, fire in Minneapolis building.

MINNEAPOLIS — A billowing fire engulfed a three-story building with 10 apartments near downtown Minneapolis yesterday, sending more than a dozen people to hospitals with injuries — some critical — ranging from burns to trauma associated with falls.

An explosion was reported about 8:15 a.m., and within minutes, a fire raged through the building, said Robert Ball, a spokesman for Hennepin County Emergency Medical Services. Paramedics, responding amid sub-zero temperatures, found victims on the ground, some with injuries that suggested they might have fallen several stories.

“It’s not clear whether people were pushed out of the building from the explosion, or whether they fell or jumped out of windows to escape,” Ball said.

No fatalities have been reported, but authorities weren’t sure whether any residents still were in the building. Its roof had partially collapsed, making it too dangerous for firefighters to search the premises, said Assistant Minneapolis Fire Chief Cherie Penn.

There were reports of family members saying three people living in the apartment were not in the hospital and cannot be accounted for.

The Minneapolis Fire Chief said even though many will be wanting to know the cause of this fire immediately, it may take a little bit to figure out what happened.

“You’re going to have to have some patience with us, it’s going to take law enforcement and arson investigators some time. It’s going to be a very difficult investigation. We’re going to determine the cause and origin, so it’s going to take us some time,” said Chief John Fruetel.

We know firefighters inspected the building in 2012 and issued a clean bill with no problems. The focus now is figuring out who the victims are. Fruetel said there is some confusion as to who was in the building or lived there. He said they’ve got some work to do figuring out who lived in the building, who may have had visitors, who were home and who were not home.

Officers are meeting with families to gather information, and several people don’t speak English so they need interpreters.

In addition to apartments, the building contained a store on the ground floor that was used as a “community center.”

Residents of Casselton, North Dakota were allowed to return to their homes, and the investigation into the causes of the derailment of a train carrying crude oil began yesterday. CNN reports that investigators were able to get closer to the wreckage yesterday, but they had already been examining video of the crash.

…[I]nformation taken from recording devices has been revealing, said National Transportation and Safety Board spokesman Robert L. Sumwalt.

A video camera at the head of the oil train recorded the crash as it slammed into a car of a derailed grain train.

“We looked at the last 20 seconds of the forward facing video from the oil train. And basically it shows the collision sequence,” Sumwalt said.

When the oil train arrived, the other train transporting grain and soy bean had already derailed, and one of its cars was lying in the oil train’s path, he said.

The derailment and fire that led to the evacuation of a North Dakota town has renewed the debate over whether it’s safer to ship oil by rail or pipeline as the U.S. completes a review of the Keystone XL project.

“Any time there is an incident, you have heightened talk and scrutiny on oil transportation,” Brigham McCown, a former director of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, said yesterday in an interview. “It will add to the conversation.” [….]

While climate change has been the focus of the fight over TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, a subset in the debate has been the relative safety of pipes versus trains. The U.S. State Department, reviewing the $5.4 billion project because it would cross the U.S. border, is weighing whether the pipeline would be in the national interest.

Keystone would allow about 100,000 barrels a day of crude from the Bakken formation in Montana and North Dakota onto the pipeline through a link in Baker, Montana.

“Bakken oil is going to come under increasing scrutiny,” as a result of the rail explosion, said Robert Schulz, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business. “You may see additional thoughts of, ‘Let’s approve Keystone because it’s going to be safer.’”

The North Dakota accident is the fourth major North American derailment in six months by trains transporting crude. Record volumes of oil are moving by rail as production from North Dakota and Texas have pushed U.S. output to the most since 1988 and pipeline capacity has failed to keep up.

Time has not deflated Edward Snowden’s messianic sense of self-importance. Nor has living in an actual police state given the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower any greater appreciation of the actual freedoms that Americans enjoy.

The Snowden of Gellman’s interview is seized with infuriating certitude about the righteousness of his cause. Not for Snowden any anxiety about the implications for national security of his theft of government secrets, any regrets about his violations of a duty of secrecy.

“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished. I already won,” Snowden proclaimed. “Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

And what gave Snowden the right to assume that responsibility? “That whole question — who elected you? — inverts the model. They elected me. The overseers,” he said. “The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

As the date for the Olympic Games in Sochi draws closer, Russia’s siloviki are becoming more active in terms of collecting data from Russians and foreigners. Although they can at least partially justify their decision to register every Russian who comes to Sochi during the Olympics with the desire to prevent terrorist attacks, the decree that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed Nov. 8 has no relationship whatsoever to that goal.

That decree expressly authorizes the government to collect data on telephone calls and Internet contacts made by the Olympic Games’ organizers, athletes and foreign journalists.

Irina Borogan and I have already published an article in The Guardian in October explaining how the authorities had installed an advanced wiretapping and surveillance system in Sochi, but Medvedev’s order adds significant scope to those activities.

The decree provides for the creation of a database for the users of all types of communication, including Internet services at public Wi-Fi locations “in a volume equal to the volume of information contained in the Olympic and Paralympic identity and accreditation cards.” That is, the database will contain not only each subscriber’s full name, but also detailed information guaranteed to establish his identity. What’s more, the database will contain “data on payments for communications services rendered, including connections, traffic and subscriber payments.”

That is called “gathering metadata” in the language of intelligence agencies.

So far no objections to this surveillance have been registered by Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, or any other member of Wikileaks. I wonder why?

So . . . what stories are you following today? Let us know in the comment thread, and have a great day!

BB I am glad you got that computer thing fixed too. Are you all stocked up and ready for the snow? There is a real annoying commercial I saw with Michael Bolton, that ass clown…and this cartoon hit the feel you get while watching it.

On New Year’s Eve, an Illinois woman finally received a package her brother-in-law had sent to her family for Christmas. The damaged box came with a surprise: A gift from “Barack, Michelle + the girls,” according to the handwriting on the self-adhesive gift tag.

Alane Ecklund Church said her husband opened the box at breakfast on New Year’s Day and found it in “major disarray.”

“The gifts were broken open. Parts of the old box were in this toilet paper box that the post office repackaged, and in the bottom of the box was this extra gift,” Church told the TODAY anchors on Thursday via Skype. “We were reading the tag, trying to figure out where this came from. It was opened, so we then discovered this was a very personal gift to Mama Kaye.”

That would be Eleanor “Mama Kaye” Wilson, a close friend of the Obama family and godmother to Sasha and Malia. And the gift was a personalized book of photographs.

“It’s very special. Private moments of their year of 2013 together,” Church said.

After learning who the gift’s intended recipient was, Church tracked Wilson down and phoned her. That’s when she learned the Obama daughters make their godmother a memory book every year.

Wow – that’s some picture of your street, BB – it rivals some of the ones in SF!

I know what you mean about the forecasters – we were supposed to get light snow last night and there was none. Everyone around here is hyped up for the storm – it’s like being around a bunch of kids who’ve had too much sugar. Hopefully, the dire blizzard predictions will not materialize.

That’s not my street, lol. Sorry if I gave that impression. It’s Beacon Hill in downtown Boston up near the State House. It’s one of the most expensive addresses around here. John Kerry has a house on top of Beacon Hill.

I figured that’s why you thought that. My hill has little cape cod houses on it and a few larger ones that were there before the development in the 1950s. Plus a couple houses that have been enlarged and one big ugly house that someone built at the top of the hill for some unfathomable reason.

Also not supposed to happen? A population increase in Jerry Brown’s California:

The United States population grew only 0.72 percent last year, to 316,128,839 in July from 313,873,685 a year earlier, according to figures released Monday by the Census Bureau….

There was strong growth … in California….

The largest population increases over the year were in Texas (387,397 people), California (332,643) and Florida (232,111)…. California this year became the first state to top 38 million residents, with a population of 38,332,521….

You may recall that in the early part of 2013, Fox became obsessed with the notion that California taxes were going to provoke a mass exodus from the state
…
Oh, and the states in the bottom 15 in terms of population growth for 2013 include Wisconsin, Kansas, Mississippi, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico — all with right-wing/tea party governors. So what’s the pattern?

But regionally, Massachusetts was the leader, with the other five New England states all ranking in the bottom 10 nationally in growth rate.

Massachusetts has “some natural advantages vis-à-vis the rest of New England — we’re a natural magnet for young people to come here to study,” said Michael Goodman, an associate professor of public policy at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

He said the relatively high quality of life here and the economic situation were draws for graduates to stay.

Given that the state’s population skews older — and is expected to get even grayer in years to come — continued movement to the area, by students and others, remains important for Massachusetts, he said.

We’ve grown like crazy for the last 30 years and it has nothing to do with the lack of a state income tax. Since the 80s TX economy has diversified to be not very dependent on energy now. However, the energy industry is still big enough to make us somewhat counter cyclical and more resilient during recessions etc.

It’s quite easy to start a business here and corporations locate here because of cheap land and construction costs. Low taxes don’t matter as much as a well educated work force due to the state university system, but that could easily change, and a pay scale which I imagine is below average. People move here because of the availability of jobs and cheap real estate. Though there may be some wingnut migration to other areas, in my area most folks move here from California or the Northeast and there are lots of them.

We are only growing at the top part of the income scale, because no one else can afford to live here. The economic situation for most people is getting steadily worse. We have the highest single family home price in the continental U.S.

I think that was true for the most part when I lived there in the 70s, at least for the coastal cities. Whole developments of $million+ houses were built in the West Austin hills which are full of CA migrants who think they got great deals.

TAMPA — A man who shot a trucker to death in 1992 but was judged to be criminally insane seemed nervous Saturday when stopped for speeding east of Gainesville, a deputy reported.

David Harris Dunaway, 58, was wanted by federal authorities, the deputy learned. A grand jury in Tampa had indicted him on a gun charge Dec. 18, alleging that he had a pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition, illegal for someone with Dunaway’s medical history.

But in a search of his green Honda van, the deputy found more — 36 guns, 4,629 rounds….

Anyone serious about defending freedom or killing ducks can now purchase nine varieties of Mossberg shotgun, two semiautomatic rifles, or a semiautomatic pistol branded with the logo of the culture-warrin’, gay-bashin’ Roberston clan — plus, an American-flag bandanna comes with every purchase — because nothing says authenticity in the USA like cross-promotion.

I was just a fixin’ my selfie a plate of collards with onions and mushrooms, and blackeyed peas, brown rice, and cornbread to go with. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in couple days, and I became everything I’ve always wanted to be.

Nobody but me likes all the greens,spinach, turnips, collards, mustard, polk (although I can’t get it in the stores). I thought you would ask who was I became, no not Popeye, but was thinking of Hercules, after BB said the storm was named Hercules. That was being funny, and silly at the same time. Here:

It is amazing to witness the sheer depths of rage, denial and disgust many people experience as they see millions of people gaining access to affordable health care for the first time. Back on the 31st I wrote this overview which outlined how more than 9 million people now have health care coverage because of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). It now seems like the number is more like 10 million (more on that in a moment). …

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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.

You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.